


Catoptric

by jusrecht



Category: Katekyou Hitman Reborn!
Genre: Experimental, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-03
Updated: 2014-08-03
Packaged: 2018-02-11 15:20:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 911
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2073165
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jusrecht/pseuds/jusrecht





	Catoptric

  
Listen, kid, and wipe that insolent smirk off your face. We only have five minutes, and this story might not be long, but you can learn something valuable from it. Hopefully.  
  
Both of us know the so-called hero of the story. We know him well, but not nearly well enough. I know this and you know this: Hibari Kyouya always thought that he was a man who never blinked in the face of risks. He had in his mind this childish concept of bravery, and to justify it, he sought risks, ran into walls, beat everyone into a bloody pulp, and generally tried to convince himself that he was the most powerful man on earth.   
  
Of course it’s bravery—when you are twelve. The problem is we all grow up and there’s something called ‘age’, another called ‘maturity’, and when you are twenty years older, running into walls and beating everybody into a bloody pulp are the virtual equivalent of stupidity.   
  
But the best part is, bravery was not even the point at all. Because when twenty-years-older finally made it past his thick skull, he was already too late.   
  
You can keep sneering like a little brat who thinks he knows better, but shut up and listen. There was a man. He was a masochistic idiot because only masochistic idiots would care for Hibari Kyouya. He was annoyingly constant and disgustingly cheerful and incorrigibly stubborn and such a damned illogicality that there could be no question about unstoppable forces or immovable objects around him anymore. He did the impossible and for that Hibari hated him forever.   
  
Two facts about Hibari Kyouya: he was a Cloud and he wore a thick, near-impenetrable armour with poison-tipped hedgehog spikes that threatened to bite people to death if they got too close, and still it wouldn't protect him from falling. And this kind of people fall the hardest.   
  
Everybody knows that the thicker the armour, then the frailer the inside—everyone except Hibari Kyouya, mostly because he lied so hard he actually believed it himself. So he spent more than ten years telling himself that he didn’t care. Most of the times, His Grand Stupid Irritating Golden Blondness didn’t care about it, but the few times that he _did_ care, the love/obsession/whatever of his life laughed and took so much pleasure in hurting him that it was a wonder how he could still get back on his feet and come back again some weeks later. Masochistic idiocy really reached new heights during those times, and still all Hibari Kyouya did was smirk and taunt because he was a sick, sick man who believed all lies he had told himself.   
  
Except karmic wheels are always turning and lies always come back to bite you in the ass eventually. This time it was in the form of a satin-lined coffin and a stupidly familiar face frozen in this expressionless mask of _nothingness_.   
  
Only then did he raise his hand to touch the man’s cold, dead face. Only then did he dare. Because now there was no blond idiot who could smile triumphantly and say, _you care after all, Kyouya,_ and it was nice and safe and too fucking late   
  
He was a proud man—he was always such a proud man. So what do you think will happen to a proud man after his pride crumbles, turning into a collapsed pedestal?  
  
Life. Life will happen. You’re nothing if you don’t learn and Hibari Kyouya hadn’t been learning for a very long time. He was an excellent student—when he wanted to be, and hell knows he didn’t want to learn anything from this branch of life. Ever. Unfortunately for him, life has a way of drilling a lesson into your skull and believe me, its revenge is a bitch.   
  
Painful? Of course it was. We both know it was the only way to teach him anything. Eventually he learned this one lesson (that he apparently was _capable_ of feelings outside the greedy and bloodthirsty spectrum), but he did not learn the other (how to grow up, how to measure, how to let go, how to cope, how to survive without sacrificing the rest of the world—basically everything that makes an adult _an adult_ ).   
  
So he fought everything in the only way he knew how: with violence, vengeance, ruthlessness. He thought if he killed enough people, destroyed enough lives, then the world would cower and stop making him _hurt_. It was a child’s thinking but he never did grow up, and before you know it—bam, it was the end of the world.  
  
Because in the end, better late than never can only do so much. Try and taste for yourself how bitter those two words are, this ruthless, ice-cold knowledge that you are T-O-O L-A-T-E. Even after taking his revenge, all he had left was his own teetering sanity and a crippled world whose golden-haired ghosts never left. And the other thing about ghosts is they will never be tangible enough, and isn’t that the absolutely fucking perfect nightmare to live with for the rest of your life.  
  
I’m telling you not because I look like you. Not even because I am you. I’m telling you now because it sucks to live like that, but if you manage to end up that stupid even after everything, then I'll be the first to laugh at you.  
  
And you'll hear it, I swear you will.  
  
  
 ** _End_**  
  



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